The leading artist of the German
Renaissance, Albrecht Durer ranks alongside Jan Van Eyck (c.1395-1441)
and Roger Van der Weyden (1400-1464), as one of the greatest Northern
Renaissance artists. He was an early pioneer of several arts media,
including drawing. Also, along with Rembrandt
and Goya, he is regarded as a supreme master of
printmaking, being revered for his woodcuts,
notably the Apocalypse series (1498), Passion cycle (c.1497-1500)
and the Life of the Virgin (1500), as well as numerous works of
engraving, notably The Knight,
Death and the Detail (1513), St Jerome in His Study (1514),
and Melancholia (1514). His paintings include religious
art, mostly altarpiece
art, portraiture and self-portraits,
as well as scientific treatises and theological writings. Durer's main
contribution to art was to create a synthesis between the aesthetics
of the Italian Renaissance,
and those of the Northern
Renaissance. He was the last representative of German
Gothic Art, and the first modern artist north of the Alps.

The Durer family originally came from Hungary
where Albrecht's grandfather, and then his father, had practiced goldsmithing;
after a stay in the Netherlands, his father settled in Nuremberg in 1455.
Durer grew up in a family of somewhere between 14 and 17 siblings. His
godfather, Anton Koberger was an established publisher who went on to
own 24 printing presses and had offices in Germany and abroad. His most
famous journal was the Nuremberg Chronicle which was published
in 1493 and had hundreds of woodcut illustrations. It is thought that
his godson may have designed some of these prints. The young Durer probably
received his first training in his father's goldsmith workshop. If so,
it was an excellent apprenticeship for his later development as a draughtsman
and engraver. It was, in fact, his graphic work (especially his figure-drawing
and sketching of animals and the countryside),
rather than his paintings, that brought him international fame in his
own lifetime. During the 16th century the whole of Europe copied his many
drawings and prints. His earliest surviving drawing is a Self Portrait
in silverpoint (1484, Albertina), which clearly demonstrates his technical
precocity, and which no doubt influenced his decision in 1486 to become
an apprentice of the Nuremberg painter Michael Wolgemut
(1434-1519), a disciple of the artist Hans Pleydenwurff, who had been
instrumental in bringing the style of the Netherlandish
Renaissance to Germany. Wolgemut had a large workshop which produced,
in particular, woodcuts for books and this was the area Durer trained
in. The works which the young Durer created at this time, although more
decorative, show the influence of the monumental style of his teacher
(The Cemetery of St John, watercolour & gouache, 1489, Bremen
Museum).

Early Art

In early 1490, when his apprenticeship
finished, Durer left Nuremberg to extend his experience. He was away for
four years, but in the absence of hard facts, we can only guess what the
stages of his journey were. It has been suggested that he may have visited
Colmar, famous as the home of Martin Schongauer
(d.1491), and the region of Frankfurt am Mainz where, it seems, the mysterious
but no less famous 'Master of the Housebook' was working. However, a study
of documents and the style of the works of this period, in which the influence
of Dutch painters like Geertgen tot Sint Jans (c.1465-95) and of Dirk
Bouts (1415-75) is visible, makes it seem likely that Durer must have
carried on to the Low Countries, there to study works in the tradition
of Jan Van Eyck (1390-1441) and Roger
Van der Weyden (1400-1464).

In March 1492 Durer retraced his footsteps
and paid a visit to Colmar. Martin Schongauer had died the previous year,
but his three brothers met with Durer and introduced him to their fourth
brother Georg, who lived in Basel. There, thanks to introductions from
the famous publisher Anton Koberger, Durer gained access to humanist circles
where he was made welcome and became friendly with Johannes Amerbach.

During these years on the move, Durer concentrated
above all on graphic art: drawings and
plans for woodcuts, combining the influences of Schongauer and the inventive
freedom of the Master of the Housebook. The book
illustration called St Jerome Caring for the Lion (1492), which
appeared in an edition of St Jerome's letters, is the only documented
print of the period, but Durer is acknowledged to be the illustrator of
several other works, such as Bergmann von Olpe's Ship of Fools,
and is known to have created designs for Amerbach's edition of the works
of Terence, although few were actually used. Also from this time
dates Durer's first painted Self-Portrait (1492, Louvre, Paris),
a masterpiece of introspection.

NOTE: Painting in northern Germany during
the late 15th century was exemplified by the work of the Cologne
School, which reached a highpoint under Stefan
Lochner (c.1410-51) during the middle of the century.

Visit to Venice

The year 1493 saw Durer in Strasbourg.
In 1494 he returned to Nuremberg again, where he married Agnes, the daughter
of the nobleman Hans Frey. It may have been an arranged marriage, his
portraits of her lack any warmth and they never had any children. Shortly
after his wedding, Durer travelled to Venice, a trip which had an altogether
exceptional effect on the young husband. To most of Durer's contemporaries
the living sources of art were still considered to be Antwerp, Bruges,
and Ghent, the Renaissance been viewed as an exclusively Italian movement,
offering German artists merely a selection of decorative motifs taken
from antiquity. But Durer saw in Italy a true renewal of aesthetics and
creative thought, and he flung himself enthusiastically into a study of
Venetian painting,
copying Andrea Mantegna (1430-1506),
Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516), Antonio
Pollaiuolo (1432-98), Lorenzo di Credi (1458-1537), and Vittore
Carpaccio (c.1465-1525/6), and gradually assimilating the new Renaissance
idiom, particularly in the fields of linear
perspective and the treatment of female
nudes.

While his interest was being aroused in
artistic theory, he also displayed a strong curiosity about nature, a
feature that influenced a good deal of his work. For instance, during
his return to Germany, he produced several examples of landscape
painting, reproducing views of the countryside he passed through,
such as: the Wehlschpirg (1495, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum), Pond
in the Woods (1495, British
Museum) and View of Arco (1495, Louvre). (Note: See also the
Danube School of landscape
painting which Durer must have known about, which had just begun (c.1490)
in the Danube valley of south Germany.) This watercolour
painting, which is striking in its modernity, consistency, and expressive
use of colours, may be contrasted, with his more usual traditional approach
to nature resulting in studies such as The Crab (c.1495, Rotterdam,
B.V.B.), A Young Hare (1502, Albertina, Vienna) and Great
Piece of Turf (1503, Albertina, Vienna).

Mature Paintings
and Prints

By 1495 Durer was back in Nuremberg, and,
thanks to financial support from Frederick the Wise, a period of intense
activity now began. By the age of 30 (1501), Durer had completed most
of his three most famous woodcuts (Apocalypse, Passion Cycle
and Life of the Virgin) and had mastered the use of the burin to
make engravings, producing such notable works as Nemesis (1502),
The Sea Monster (1498) and Saint Eustace (1501). On the
stylistic level, he succeeded in achieving a fusion between the lessons
he had learned in Italy and those of his training in the German-Flemish
tradition. In addition, from the iconographical viewpoint, he revealed
an ecclesiastic taste, producing humanist portraits and works on numerous
biblical themes, as well as philosophical allegories, genre scenes, and
works of nature.

As well as an outstanding series of engravings,
including the cycle of the Apocalypse which stands out as one of
the wonderful creations of German art, he executed a dozen paintings in
1500. A polyptych altarpiece, commissioned by Frederick the Wise, was
planned by Durer but actually carried out by his assistants (The Seven
Sorrrows, 1496, Dresden, and the Mater Dolorosa, 1496, Alte
Pinakothek, Munich); a second, now known as the Altarpiece of Wittenberg
(1496-7, Dresden), was entirely his own work. For the Virgin Adoring
the Child, Durer borrowed from Flemish nativities, while the precision
of the modelling, the still life in the foreground and the simplified
architectural perspective of the background indicate Francesco
Squarcione or Mantegna. The composition as a whole, with its precise
drawing and muted tones, has an atmosphere of solemn piety that is close
to the Pieta paintings of Giovanni Bellini. The side-panels (St
Anthony and St Sebastian), which were painted later (c.1504),
are stylistically more open, while their realism, and the flesh of the
putti, contrast with the spirituality of the central panel.

Along with these altarpieces, Durer painted
his Frederick the Wise (1496, Berlin-Dahlem). In this work, every
decorative element is abandoned in favour of a psychological focus, formal
bareness being the only way of expressing the inner tension of the sitter.
In comparison with this masterly work, the later Portrait of Oswalt
Krell (1499, Alte Pinakothek, Munich) shows a certain regression.
Meanwhile Durer painted several other portraits (including those of Katharina
Furlegerin and his Father), which we know only through copies, as well
as the Hailer Madonna (c.1497, National Gallery of Art, Washington
DC) in the manner of Giovanni Bellini's Madonnas.

Five years on from his Self-Portrait
in the Louvre, he returned to the genre with the Self-Portrait
(1498) now hanging in the Prado, and it is possible to see in the haughty
bearing and the careful arrangement of posture and decor, the distance
covered by the young draughtsman, who already, at the age of 27, was beginning
to be hailed as the greatest artist of his generation. The Self-Portrait
with Fur Collar painted two years later (1500, Alte Pinakothek, Munich)
is much more disturbing. Here, Durer depicts himself as a sort of Christ
risen from the darkness, with long golden hair that provoked sarcasm in
Venice falling symmetrically over his shoulders. Was he associating his
genius as an artist with the divine creative genius, was it a proclamation
of faith in the monumentality of the Renaissance, or was it an affirmation
of his own glory? The problem remains unsolved. The last work of his triumphant
youthful period is a Lamentation (1500, Alte Pinakothek, Munich).
Still characterized by the austere gravity of his former teacher Michael
Wolgemut, this work transcends its archaic elements by opening up, above
the body of the dead Christ and the other figures, the ideal view of a
cosmic Jerusalem.

Second Visit to
Italy

Throughout this period, and especially
after 1500, Durer's interest in the scientific theory of art was growing.
His first visit to Italy had shown him that true art was impossible without
theoretical knowledge; the meeting with Jacopo de' Barbari (active 1497-1516)
and his discovery, in 1503, of Leonardo's drawings re-confirmed this for
him. Thus it was in this state of mind that he painted the famous Paumgartner
Altarpiece (1502-4, Alte Pin, Munich). The central panel bears a Nativity
arranged in the conventional Gothic way, but, for the first time, Durer
introduced a rigorous scheme of perspective. Accordingly, the severe side-panels,
portraits of Lucas and Stephan Paumgarmer as St George and St
Eustace, are the result of careful studies of proportion.

More remarkable is The Adoration of
the Magi (1504, Uffizi Gallery, Florence), whose perspective and proportions
are executed with matchless precision, the direction of the point of flight
being set diagonally, in a way that closely anticipates later Baroque
art. As a result of his ingenious arrangement of contrasts, together
with the natural dialogue between the figures and their surroundings,
Durer surpasses the mystical warmth that infused the 1500 Lamentation
and the Paumgartner Altarpiece, and arrives at a synthesis of irresistible
clarity that reminds one of Leonardo da
Vinci (1452-1519).

In the Autumn of 1505 Durer returned to
Venice, partly to escape the plague which had broken out in Nuremberg,
but also because he felt an urgent need to improve his colour
technique in what was, after all, the greatest city of fine art painting,
or as the Venetians called it, colorito. As it was, his stature
as a master draughtsman and engraver had preceded him, and he was received
with honour in both cultural and political circles. However, the city's
painters - with the exception of the great Giovanni Bellini - were noticeably
jealous, even hostile.

The years 1506-1510 were a period of intense
focus by Durer on fine art painting.
He began by flinging himself into his first Venetian commission: the Rosenkranzfest
(The Feast of the Rose Garlands) (1506, Narodni Galerie, Prague) for the
church of the German quarter, a work which is undoubtedly a major landmark
in his career. The composition broadly derives from the traditional type
of Sacra Conversazione favoured by Bellini, but for its solemn
and meditative aspects Durer substituted an atmosphere of effervescence,
arranged around the central pyramid - Virgin, Pope and Emperor - and exquisitively
balanced by the delicate landscape that opens out in the background. It
is not the structure so much as the colour that gives the painting its
supreme sense of order. With its subtle luminous touches, it succeeds
in fusing the profound spirit and colour of the Venetian
Renaissance, with the lyricism of International
Gothic German painters of the 15th century.

Aside from this masterpiece, other works
deserve attention: The Virgin of the Siskin (1506, Berlin-Dahlem),
which illustrates the importance Durer attached to the problem of colour;
Christ among the Doctors (1506, Lugano, Thyssen Collection), a
contrast between the youthful beauty of Christ and the aged nature of
the doctors; the unfinished Young Venetian Woman (1505, K.M. Vienna),
whose delicacy and tonal warmth recalls Carpaccio; and finally, Portrait
of a Woman (c.1507, Berlin-Dahlem), delicately modelled against a
blue background.

On a technical as well as aesthetic level,
Durer's second stay in Venice was extremely important. Having discovered
the independent power of colour and his own power of expression, Durer
tried to put into practice a theory of colour, while at the same time,
with the help of Euclid, Vitruvius
and many studies of the human anatomy, seeking to improve his scientific
and mathematical understanding of Italian Renaissance
art. The culmination of his studies is the Adam and Eve (1507,
Prado, Madrid), which, in its supreme harmony, can be considered Durer's
synthesis of the ideal beauty.

Later Works
(Altarpieces, Wood Prints, Engravings) (1508-26)

On his return to Nuremberg, Durer executed
an altarpiece known as the Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand (1508,
Kunsthistorisches
Museum, Vienna), after which he painted an Adoration of the Holy
Trinity (1511, K.M. Vienna). Both these works are composed according
to the multiplication of figures and, notably in the Holy Trinity,
on the spherical Copernican idea of space, which gives them a sort of
visionary character which anticipates Albrecht Altdorfer (1480-1538),
Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594), Pieter
Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569), and later masters of Baroque
painting. However, they don't represent a notable stage in Durer's
evolution. In fact, as soon as he left behind the influential climate
of Venice, he showed a tendency to revert to the graphic style of his
earlier career, and his colour lost some of its brightness and subtlety.
As it was, after 1510, he focused on wood prints and engraving, complaining
that paintings did not earn enough money to justify the time spent. It
is unlikely that Durer made any of the wood blocks for his prints himself,
this would probably have been left to a skilled woodcutter. Durer either
drew his design directly onto the block or glued a paper drawing onto
the block for the craftsman to use. In his engraving, he produced versions
of the Passion, the Life of the Virgin, and then his masterpieces,
The Knight, Death and the Detail (1513), St Jerome in His Study
(1514), and Melancholia (1514).

Having been adopted in 1512 by a new patron,
the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, who appointed him official court
artist, Durer was assigned frequent diplomatic missions by the Council
of Nuremberg. In 1518, he was present at the Diet of Augsburg where he
completed a series of portraits such as Maximilian I (1519, K.M.
Vienna). The religious picture St Anne, the Virgin and Child (1519,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) is the outstanding work of this
period, in which few paintings were produced. Marked by a delicate composition
in soft white tones, it signals a further move towards the Mannerism
already visible in the decorative style of St Philip and St James
(1516, Uffizi, Florence).

In 1520, after the death of his patron,
Durer travelled to the court of Charles V, Maximilian's successor as Emperor,
in order to drum up business. He took a large stock of prints with him,
and kept accurate records on who he sold the prints to and for how much.
He stayed in the Netherlands for almost a year, meeting Erasmus (1469-1536),
the greatest scholar of the Northern Renaissance, as well as the painters
Quentin Massys (1466-1530), Joachim
Patenier (d.1524), Lucas van Leyden and Van Orley. He also studied
works by a number of Flemish masters such as - Van Eyck in Ghent, and
Hugo Van der Goes in Brussels. However, his creative activity was gradually
slowing down. In July 1521 he returned home, after catching an undetermined
illness which was to afflict him and the rate of his work for the rest
of his life.

In his Vision of a Dream (1525,
watercolour, K.M. Vienna) the human race is depicted as being swept away
by a second Flood. His final monumental work, the Four Apostles
(1526, A.P Munich), a commission he received for Nuremberg's town hall,
is a sort of testament. The four figures portray man, his ages and humours:
on the left-hand shutter, John, young and sanguine, together with a phlegmatic
Peter, stooping with age; on the right-hand shutter, the fiery Mark, with
the imperturbable Paul.

Writings

Durer began a number of theoretical treatises
around 1512-13, which he finished during the last years of his life. They
include: Treatise on Measurement (1525), Treatise on Fortifications
(1527), and the four books on the Proportions of the Human Body,
published six months after his death. Compared in importance with Luther's
Bible, these books were designed as part of an encyclopedia of art, to
be called Food for Apprentice Painters.

One of Germany's most acclaimed painters,
Durer died in Nuremberg in 1528 at the relatively young age of 56. His
main artistic legacy was in the area of printmaking, and he went on to
inspire other artists in this area like his pupil Hans
Baldung Grien (1484-1545), as well as Titian (1477-1576), Albrecht
Altdorfer (1480-1538), and Parmigianino
(1503-40).